Traditional rate control algorithms may be designed to achieve targeted video bit rates by using hardware logic to conduct quantization parameter (QP) adjustments at the frame and/or picture level of the video bitstream. When there is a scene change or content switch, a surge or drop in the compressed video bit rate can be encountered due to content complexity shifts associated with scene change. While one approach may be to use a new QP to re-encode the video frame in a second encoding pass, such a solution can create a delay that may be unacceptable for real-time applications such as video conferencing.